I didnt want to hijack Rachels thread so I thought Id post real quick here. I used the Vinegar/ Peroxide method as others suggested. The date is just now starting to emerge. this is like theose capsules you put in water and a day later you have some sort of "monster from the Blue Lagoon" spongy thing thats 50X bigger! anyway, I will post a picture for fun when its done. Its showing it was a 1918 S. Pretty cool. So in its life it went from 5 cents....to maybe $10 or something at one time before it was defaced. It hid its value for years and now that its been vinagerized lol, back to a nickel!
I didn't see the original thread, but if you're talking about restoring nickels -- I've had good luck with just vinegar. Vinegar plus peroxide would be a lot more aggressive, and I'd rather be patient. One or two people here have claimed success using vinegar plus peroxide to restore silver dates, but I still haven't tried it myself. I suspect that it wouldn't work well in most cases, because if it did, I'd expect to see more restored key dates, as we do for Buffalos. If you can already tell it's an 18-S, pull it out quick before it gets further damaged. The date will eventually disappear again if you leave it in too long.
Heres what it looks like now. I also threw a Euro in there for giggles...turned it white like a 1970s dog turd in the yard!
Interesting. The penny has an etched look that I see alot of people posting asking if its some sort of variety or error. I see no color change in the nickel at least at this point. The date is just barely appearing and im taking it out as Jeff suggested...dont want it to go away now lol!
Close ups to learn from. You can see the damage even this short amount of time does to the surface when zoomed it. Pitted and abraided. first 2 are the penny and the next 2 show a random 1964 nickel...really makes the MD pop though! Yaaa...I would keep anything even remotely important to yourself away from this chemistry.
On a 2018, the mint mark is always between the E and C on the reverse correct? Its never anywhere else right? I cant make out a mint mark now. Can you see anything that resembles a mint mark???? The 8 sure came out though!
